Why Debate Revived Kerry's Hopes

My clever son Josh, a journalist in Hong Kong, told me this morning that he was quite amazed and delighted to watch last Thursday evening's debate and see George Bush channeling Richard Milhous Nixon. There was the new JFK, cool and presidential, calmly taking apart a wound up and vastly uncomfortable incumbent, matching smile for scowl, physical ease for a sort of hunched and crabbed twist.

Kerry kept it simple for a change, and made his position on Iraq clear -- though he offered no panacea. Bush kept reiterating that he was the president and that he was right, thus demonstrating that by his definition strength is a synonym for stubbornness.

The debates, even in a fairly stilted format, level the playing field.  Both men stand on the same stage at the same time, exchanging their ideas, spin-doctors nowhere to be seen.  Here the very tall and stately Kerry had a natural advantage -- Bush looked lost behind his podium, while Kerry presided from his. The camera played on the both men all the time.  While Kerry remained still, though sometimes smiling out of tension, Bush revealed anger, uncertainly, and I think fear through his tight body language and his proclivity to scowl and pout.  Well-coached to keep on message, it is amazing that he was not similarly rehearsed to keep his face neutral and his body relaxed.

Choking, high tenor

Perhaps Bush gained sympathy from some viewers because he demonstrated vulnerability, but in the macho department, he lost out, and that has been his trump card.  And his voice compounded the problem with a sort of choking, high tenor sound.  I did note that his normal smirk, as when he feels in charge, was nowhere to be seen.

Kerry's objective was to put Bush on the defensive and to make a referendum of the debate -- and the campaign.  In this he succeeded.  But I am totally modest about reading the American electorate (just as I am the Canadian one!) All I can conclude is that I believe in my bones that we will now have a very close race.  

Of course I realize that I am far from neutral on this campaign, and that the majority of pundits and the immediate polls that indicated that Kerry won in the opinion of 53 percent of viewers to 37 percent for Bush might prove misleading in the long run.  We will know more after the vice-presidential debate and the two presidential debates yet to come over the next three weeks. Collectively, these events might solidify Bush's current slender lead, or they might prove to be downward steps toward fairly rapid erosion of his popularity.  It is just too soon to say.

Do debates matter anymore?

Why will Americans vote the way they will?  Will their choice be related to their reactions to the debates?

For starters, anyone who believes that people vote their class interests hasn't been paying attention.  If that were the case, Bush would garner 5 percent of the vote, his true base, as he once expressed it himself in a revealing joke, among the very rich and privileged.  Clearly, huge numbers of ordinary people identify with the rich and the powerful.  Democracy notwithstanding, many voters go for whom they consider to be the natural leaders of their society.  If the captains of the ship are in charge the boat will carry all through the stormy seas to the desired port.

To this end, there is something about rich macho types (especially if they can project a down to earth ordinariness, as Bush does -- and Reagan did before him even more skillfully, that reassure much of the electorate that the ship of state is in strong hands.  Kerry understands this code of masculinity with great clarity -- he sought to out-macho Bush rather than to counteract the stud image with some softer, gentler version of statesmanship.  He had to demonstrate that he is not a waffler, anything less than a warrior, albeit one not committed to fight an unpopular war with old strategies that have not been working.

Up for grabs?

It turns out that women voters too had been switching to the more macho man during these times of terror.  Kerry sought to win them back, along with many of their husbands.

Now the debates go on to the economy.  If Bush's mystique on Iraq and security have been cracked, it might follow that people in rust belt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania would look more closely at other issues of strength and weakness. They might stop to consider economic issues that will make a real impact on their states and in their personal futures.

An election that looked like it was over before the debate is up for grabs today.  The choice does make a difference, even though the key message of the debate was more about manhood than actual issues. If Kerry is "More of a Man" than Bush after all, maybe people will attend to what he has to say.  That was his potential victory last night.

We should all remember that in politics a week is an eternity -- and we still have five weeks to go.

Maybe I will not lose the bets I have been placing all over town after all.

Historian Michael Fellman, author of several books on the Civil War including The Making of Robert E. Lee. He is also Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Simon Fraser University. He writes an occasional column on the U.S. elections for The Tyee.